The TEI thinks of poetry, very basically, as a set of verse lines
which may be grouped together in various ways. It is possible to
encode a great deal more information about them (for instance,
describing their rhyme and metrical schemes), but it is not necessary
to do so. The basic elements and attributes necessary for a simple
encoding of verse are provided in the TEI’s core tag set, which is
included in all TEI DTDs, so without taking any special trouble you
can capture most poetry adequately. The elements are:

l: a verse line

lg: a group of verse lines (containing one or more
l elements)

head: a heading of any sort (including poem titles and
stanza headings)

In addition, the part attribute is available on l and
lg to indicate that a line or line group has been fragmented
into multiple parts for some reason: for instance, because a single
line is divided between two speakers or verse paragraphs.